What this means is that — as far as researchers can tell — it's
only when we sleep that we turn some of those thousands of things
that flit through our short term memory into actual bits of
information that are stored and can be recalled.

Whether you are trying to pull off a snappy presentation at work
or come up with a well-thought out response to a tough exam
question, you don't want to be impaired. If you wouldn't show up
drunk, don't show up exhausted.

You really aren't one of those few people who can get by happily
on a few hours of sleep a night.

You might think that you can get by on five or six hours a night,
but that's most likely wrong.

Only about 2% of the
population can actually perform well with just a few hours of
sleep; chances are you're in the 98% who can't. As sleep expert
and psychiatrist Dr. Daniel Buysse
told the Wall Street Journal, only about five out of every
hundred people who think they can get by on five or six
hours can perform well with that little rest.

While you might think you're doing okay with just a little sleep,
experts say that you lose the ability to recognize how poorly
you're performing after a few sleepless nights. In other words:
If you're not getting enough sleep, you can't even trust your own
assessment of how impaired you are.

As for finals week...

Most of this research doesn't necessarily target the unique
conditions final exams can bring about. If you really don't know
anything about a subject, but somehow have a plan for
learning a semester's worth of material in one night, that might
seem like the best option.

But as a general strategy, it's not the best way to go. And in
most cases, you're probably better off getting enough sleep to
think clearly and perform well. So close the books and get some
rest.